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Anyway to test a non activated dvr receiver

My old HDVR2 is dying (at least the HD and I don't want to drop $40 for an image) and I have an old R15 that was given to me because the drive had gone out on it and it was no longer being used. Supposedly its "owned" and I threw a new HD in it and formated etc.

I just wanted to get it up and running to make sure it works before I got DirecTV involved, but I can't get past the setup where you have to call DirecTV to actually just watch one of the open channels (PPV previews etc) just to make sure its working right, if its not I'll just get a replacement from DTV directly, but I'd like to have at least one owned unit on my account.

It used to be you could just tune to channel 100 with having anything activated or even a card IIRC.

My old HDVR2 is dying (at least the HD and I don't want to drop $40 for an image) and I have an old R15 that was given to me because the drive had gone out on it and it was no longer being used. Supposedly its "owned" and I threw a new HD in it and formated etc.

I just wanted to get it up and running to make sure it works before I got DirecTV involved, but I can't get past the setup where you have to call DirecTV to actually just watch one of the open channels (PPV previews etc) just to make sure its working right, if its not I'll just get a replacement from DTV directly, but I'd like to have at least one owned unit on my account.

It used to be you could just tune to channel 100 with having anything activated or even a card IIRC.

With the recent software, it has to be activated first.

With the new software it should not get to the screen to say to call and activate if there is an installation or hardware failure it detects.

Am I wrong when concluded: when it not detect signal levels it would get past the sat setup screen.

The receiver wouldn't get to the activation screen, which is past the satellite setup/validation, because it wouldn't detect a signal without the dish connected. It would state that there was a problem detecting the satellites and would go back to ensure that the correct dish was selected.

That should be much clearer than what I put before which could be read due to a, quickly, poorly written statement.

I just wanted to get it up and running to make sure it works before I got DirecTV involved, but I can't get past the setup where you have to call DirecTV to actually just watch one of the open channels (PPV previews etc) just to make sure its working right, if its not I'll just get a replacement from DTV directly, but I'd like to have at least one owned unit on my account.

Why not just call D* to activate the R15? If it works, then have them de-active the HDVR2. If not, they can deactivate it. I don't think there's any service charge for that.

Well I was going from memory of the last time I activated a used receiver and thought I was going to have to shell out $20 for the new card just to find out if the receiver worked or not. I did not know they went back to activating used 3rd party equipment without issuing a new card.

I got it activated yesterday and she works great, much faster than that old HDVR2, I should have done this long ago